by Earl
Point Eight. Jupiter has a comet family numbering about fifty—comets which reach Jupiter and can’t get past and so bend back to the sun, shuttling between those two bodies. Saturn and the outer planets combined have less than half that many controlled comets. Also numerous meteor swarms obey Jupiter’s dictates.
Point Nine. Jupiter is unique in having the Trojan Asteroids in his orbit, having pulled them from the other asteroids. Far enough around the other side of the orbit to keep from being drawn in as Jovian Moons, they are still forced to trail after Jupiter age after age.
Point Ten. Discovered by this expedition, Jupiter has a grandchild moon, revolving around Ganymede.
So, on those ten counts, Jupiter is certainly the most outstanding planet in the solar system.
WE WERE treated to a unique celestial phenomenon today. Ganymede’s baby moon furnished it. Cupid, we call it, because it darts through the crammed Jupiter sky, chasing and overtaking the other bodies as though promoting flirtations among them.
Cupid revolves much more rapidly than Ganymede rotates, so that it swings from west to east, like Phobos over Mars. Therefore, in the course of a day, it passes every other moon, and Jupiter, and the sun.
This morning, as orbital matters worked out, it performed single-handedly five eclipses! Europa, Io, two outer moons and the sun. Then, for good measure, it transited as a black disk across Jupiter’s face.
But that isn’t the amazing part. It happened to eclipse Io just as Io, in turn, was eclipsing the Seventh Moon. Try to imagine us with popping eyes as Io overtook the further moon, crossed in front of it—and then along shot Cupid, eclipsing them both. In other words, a triple eclipse!
“Or, to carry the mythological sequence through,” Ling said rather poetically, “Cupid chased Io into the arms of Moon Seven, and then, with a sense of decency, hid the union from our eyes!”
But one thing we miss is a solar eclipse with the corona. The fourteen moons eclipse the sun for us with monotonous regularity. But most of them make it a complete blacking out, being much too large. The rest cover only half or less of the sun’s disk, being too small. Thus we don’t get the blossoming out of the delicate corona.
It is really one chance in a thousand that Earth’s Moon is just the right size, and just the right distance away, to cover the sun exactly during solar eclipses on Earth. Jupiter with its fourteen moons misses the mark every time. However, Markers says if we went from moon to moon, eventually we would hit that special configuration.
Impy, our Ganymedian mascot with horns and a monkey’s body, did some mutating today, as though to keep us company. His horns sprouted a little into two prongs, making him more comical than ever. And his fur thickened, for no reason except that the mutation-enzyme is constantly working in his system.
It illustrates so clearly—and maddeningly—what is happening to us. For the enzyme is determined to take our soft, hairless bodies and outfit them for the ultra-winter environment. There is only one term to describe us now—shaggy brutes.
We haven’t given up hope. Swinerton admits no results, but at least has the enzyme in concentrates. He’s not quite sure what to do with it.
ONE-HUNDRED-S EVENTY-FIRST day.
Halloway has helped some to keep our minds off our trouble. He is ready at the drop of a hat to ramble on about the pyramids. His father, on Earth, has pieced out some data of the Martian Era, from the crypt records.
About seventy to eighty thousand years ago, the Martians achieved interplanetary travel. They visited Earth as late as ten thousand years ago. They set up their age-lasting pyramids on Mercury, Venus, Earth and out here, on Callisto if not on Jupiter.
But why? At this point, Halloway always shakes his head, refusing even to reveal his guess.
“It’s tied up with the asteroids,” he repeats, without elaboration. “Father and I are sure of that. But we won’t make any wild speculations till we have proof. Give me one pyramid to examine here, and I’ll have the proof. Damn, I wish there was a pyramid right here on Ganymede!”
“Maybe the Martians didn’t build any here,” Tarnay put in gloomily, “because of the super-evolution menace. Maybe it’s in the air we breathe. Maybe we were doomed the moment we set foot here. Maybe—”
“Tarnay!” Captain Atwell said quietly, and Tarnay swallowed and stopped.
We don’t blame him for slipping a little, or sounding as though he were going hysterical. We all feel at times as though—No, don’t worry, Earth. Our outward bodies may be taking on a wild look, but our minds are the same—we solemnly hope!
Hello, Tycho Space Station, Moon! Markers sends his appreciation for your confirmation of the two new moons of Jupiter he discovered. Evidently your visual conditions are excellent, as Palomar on Earth has not yet located them.
The time mounts up.
Impy did more than amuse us today. He startled us. Or at least Swinerton. Swinerton stared at him curiously this morning, then asked if we noticed something. We shook our heads.
“Impy’s the same as yesterday,” Von Zell said.
“That’s it!” Swinerton yelled, as best he could with thick, flabby lips. “He’s stopped mutating. The prong-buds that started two days ago have stopped growing. What stopped the process? It may be our answer!”
We all babbled out at once. Karsen broke into our confusion. Impy had seemed more attached to her than any of us, and spent most of his time around her.
“I remember going in the laboratory yesterday for my salt-shaker,” she said. “Von Zell borrowed it, I suppose as sodium chloride for his solutions. Impy followed me. I forgot about him till I was back in the kitchen. When I called sharply, he came scampering out. And he was nibbling, or licking his lips, over something. He must have tried one of the reagents!”
“Which reagent?” Swinerton demanded. “I didn’t think any Earth reagent would help. But Impy’s case gives a clue that one will. Which reagent?”
KARSEN shook her head, not having seen Impy till he came out. Excitedly, Swinerton led the way to the bunkroom, made over into a “laboratory”. Working in desperate haste, he, Von Zell and Parletti soon had chemicals scattered all over.
“Impy sampled one of those,” Swinerton half moaned. “But we don’t know which one!”
One of them is our antidote. But which one, of the hundreds? Our chemical equipment, in the improved and larger ship of this expedition, is quite sizable. How could we find out?
Simple, it may seem, merely to try each reagent with the enzyme concentrate, till one reacts. But each test takes twelve hours for dead-certain results. Time is our enemy now. Swinerton and his helpers are experimenting with a dozen batches at a time. We hope they will strike the right one before—well, before it’s too late.
You see, their fingers are stiff, clumsy. They drop test-tubes as often as not. Our margin of time is probably a week. After that, with hands like useless stumps, we’ll be helpless.
I’m tapping at these keys with my thumbs. The other fingers are half-paralyzed. By the inexorable laws of evolution, compressed into hours instead of ages, we are becoming creatures of the wild.
Ironic, isn’t it, that our salvation is right before our hands—if they would remain hands.
One-hundred-seventy-third day.
To quiet our nerves, Captain Atwell had us play phonograph records of Earth music yesterday. They sounded wonderful. Karsen looked like she was going to break down. But after a glance at the rest of us, she stiffened.
Maybe Atwell was testing us. Anyway he said,
“Chins up! We’ll get out of this scrape, as we got out of tight corners on Mars, Venus and Mercury. And remember—we’re going to bring back the ‘Secret of the Pyramids’ !”
That thought still had the power to snap us out of it. Smiling, Karsen baked a coffee-cake, and while eating it we didn’t once ask Swinerton how things were going. We joked and laughed and sang.
Tarnay had an idea. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he piped, jumping up. “Behold, the Wild Ma
n from Borneo! Only a dime, ten cents.”
Outside, Jupiter shone like a great, unwinking eye, watching these little beings from another world who had dared invade the realm he ruled.
Still no results today.
But Swinerton says we are winning the race with time. Half the reagents have been tried. In three days, the other half will be finished.
That’s a cheering note, but the suspense is telling on us. However, we still had spirit enough to lay bets as to which reagent it will be. We made a pool, dividing the remaining chemicals into ten groups, each getting a designated portion. Who will the winner be? The prize will be the privilege of first announcing to Earth the “Secret of the Pyramids”, when that is solved. No small honor!
CHAPTER VIII
Marooned on Ganymede
ONE-HUNDRED-SEVENTY-FIFTH day.
Swinerton, Parletti and Von Zell are narrowing down the reagents rapidly. Ironically, it seems it will be among the last tests. Tarnay says if it is the very last, he will never again look the law of averages in the face.
Impy has definitely stopped mutating. His prong-buds dropped off today, and he is back where he was when we found him. Whatever that reagent is, it certainly knocked the mutation-enzyme flat on its back.
Halloway, already planning ahead, is trying to talk Captain Atwell into being allowed to take the lifeboat to Callisto.
“Give me one day at that pyramid on Callisto,” Halloway declares, “and I’ll give you the answer to the Martian mystery!”
How proud we’ll be when that day comes. A search that began on Mars, and extended to Venus and Mercury, will be answered at Jupiter.
Time moves inexorably ahead. Search is narrowed down to ten reagents today. They’ve been added to the enzyme-culture. We’ll know which is our salvation tomorrow.
Impy got into more mischief today. Much like an Earth monkey, he gets his hands into everything. He found Markers’ pipe smoldering, puffed on it, then spilled the burning embers in a clothes closet, where he had hidden. We smelled smoke, and luckily put the flames out before they had done much damage.
“That’s all right, Impy,” Tarnay said, finding one of his shirts ruined. “You gave us the clue to the reagent. You’ve done more good than harm.”
We were all in the same forgiving mood, laughing over the matter. Tomorrow our misery will be over—or as soon after as the antidote takes the poison of the enzyme out of our blood.
My reports are shorter now, as I’m having great difficulty working these keys.
One-hundred-seventy-seventh day.
Bad news, Earth! Two items of bad news, in fact.
First, Impy indulged in a more serious prank this morning. He crawled among the apparatus in the control room and somehow short-circuited the electrical system. Tarnay says he must have thrown several switches in rapid succession.
We heard the hissing of heated wires, followed by a series of explosions. Impy came scampering out in fright, huddling behind Karsen’s legs. We rushed in, to find the control room filled with smoke and ozone.
Tarnay quickly ripped the main power-cable loose, to prevent more short circuits. After the air cleared, he unbolted the panels and looked behind at the wiring system. It was a fused mass! Worse still, the main bank of batteries had cracked. Their solutions had spilled. The force of the explosion had cracked the floor-plate and allowed these precious lead salts to drain down into the vacuum-space next to the hull.
When told of the damage, Captain Atwell turned and stalked toward Impy.
“No Captain!” Karsen said in pity. “Impy didn’t know what he was doing. Anyway, remember he did save us from the enzyme—”
“Did he?” Swinerton had just stepped slowly from the laboratory, followed by Parletti and Von Zell. Their faces were pale and dazed.
“We tried the last reagent,” Swinerton croaked on. “Not one worked!”
THIS is a terrible blow.
We are utterly bewildered—and hopeless. The reagent, whatever it was, worked on Impy. But it wouldn’t work on our human types of blood, evidently.
Our last resort would be to make a run for it—back to Earth. But now we can’t. Tarnay says it would take days or weeks to make repairs. And our hands—our huge, swollen hands—.
Impy is dead. Atwell shot him and threw his body out. Not in futile revenge against a dumb beast, he says, but to make sure Impy didn’t cause worse trouble.
Worse trouble! Could anything worse take place?
One-hundred-seventy-ninth day.
We’re saved! From the mutation-menace, that is.
Yesterday morning, Swinerton came out of his lethargy, eying us one after another, as though we were specimens under his microscope. We thought he had gone mad. More so when he let out a yelp of pure joy.
“You’ve all been the same for five days!” he told us. “You haven’t changed! Your hair hasn’t grown, or your nails. Five days ago we stopped mutating!”
We hardly dared believe him. But thinking it over, we knew he was right. None of us could remember our nails or our hair growing at the previous rate.
What was the answer—Divine Providence?
Swinerton had the true answer. “Five days ago we ate the coffee-cake Karsen made. Yeast is used in baking. Yeast is an enzyme too. A good old Earth enzyme that killed the mutation-enzyme in us!”
It was all clear, then. Hanging around the kitchen, Impy had sampled yeast, before going in the lab. He was still nibbling on that, rather than a reagent, when he came out at Karsen’s call. Karsen had saved us, by sheer accident, in feeding us coffee-cake!
Captain Atwell stuck out his hand.
“Karsen—” he began.
But she turned away with a muffled sob. She had held out for more than a month, bravely, in the face of a horrible fate. Now she broke down. We knew why. She had really liked little Impy.
I have better news today.
First signs of our release from the mutation are here. Our nails are crumbling at the ends. Swinerton says we’ll be normal in a week. Just to make sure, he is feeding us all the yeast that is left in the larder.
But now the other problem faces us.
Tarnay says the repair job doesn’t worry him. It’s the metals that are lost. A good many pounds of copper wire were fused in the short circuit. The battery-bank lost two hundred pounds of lead solution. We haven’t sufficient replacements for those two metals. The ship is made mainly of steel and aluminun.
And Parletti reminded us that Ganymede has no heavy metal deposits—no lead or copper! Where will we get them?
Halloway suggested going to Callisto in the lifeboat, to locate metal ores. Captain Atwell is thinking it over. There is a pyramid on Callisto, too. We still hope to solve that mystery.
Tarnay needs my radio batteries now, for welding work. Will resume when conditions warrant, which may not be for weeks or months.
CHAPTER IX
Search for Ore
GREETINGS, Earth!
Jupiter Expedition Number One reporting, after three months, via etherline radio. Gillway coding. Two hundred seventieth day since leaving Earth.
We have been on Ganymede six months today—the prearranged deadline for our departure. It is imperative that we leave soon, or even food rationing won’t save us.
Jupiter is swinging out in its orbit, toward aphelion. Because of its gigantic orbit, its distance from the sun varies as much as forty-two million miles. If we miss this chance to head back for Earth—now swinging around the sun toward us—we’ll have added an eventual 200 million miles to our trip including Earth’s orbit. Which means two added months of travel in space. Our reserves of food wouldn’t last two extra months.
This expedition to Jupiter had to be planned more carefully than any other. Because of the extra fuel needed for the long space journey, food supplies were crowded down. We left Earth at one-quarter year past opposition, so that Earth would sooner make its swing around the sun and come back on Jupiter’s side. The whole time-scale was c
alculated at twelve Earth months—six in space, six at Jupiter.
Now our six months here are completed—yet we can’t return. Our engine is useless.
I reported three months ago that a serious accident had occurred. The Ganymedian monkey, Impy, had short-circuited the electrical system. I don’t have to tell you how complicated and vital the spark system of a rocket engine is. Forty-five spark plugs to fire each tube, and there are seventy-two tubes. An intricate network of wires serves that purpose. Most were fused. Worse yet, the feeding batteries had been cracked, draining their fluids away. Lead plates had crumbled and dribbled out with the flow.
A nasty repair job. But not just a repair job. Metals had been irretrievably lost. Copper wires had fused, and lead solution had leaked into the vacuum-space between the hulls, where we could not scrape it up without taking the ship apart, beam by beam.
In terms of metal, we had lost fifty pounds of copper, and two hundred pounds of lead.
About ourselves—briefly, we are all well, physically. Ling came down with severe bronchitis, being the least adapted, by race, to an arctic climate. But Parletti doctored him back to health. Our morale—well, we’ve taken the engine trouble in our stride. But what hurts us is not solving the “Secret of the Pyramids.”
We have hopes of fixing our engine soon. But Captain Atwell says, adamantly, that we will then have to leave immediately. No chance to scout around here for any pyramids.
Tarnay, chief engineer, gave his report after a thorough examination of the damage. He had enough bus-bar replacements for half the wiring job, but needed 25 pounds of copper—or a substitute.
PARLETTI furnished the substitute. He had discovered a large deposit of beryllium ore within thirty miles of camp. Rich ore, luckily. Tarnay and Ling devised an electrolytic bath, hooking up my radio batteries. The beryllium was deposited as powder. This was melted, by an improvised electric arc, and the metal was drawn into wire. So that problem was solved, as beryllium is a good conductor of electricity, comparable to copper and silver.